One to go :-)

Well I got up this morning fully intending to not step out of my office until I’d done my tax, VAT and croft census returns. After all I’d had a very productive day yesterday and just had one or two wee things to finish of, so after the usual round of feeding and Bonzo walking. Bonzo and I had our muesli after I’d carefully picked out all the raisins from his.

As poor old Molly spends her day in a cage in the Land Rover she just gets one or two dog biscuits, not doing enough exercise these days to warrant any more. My trusty wee dug won’t leave the croft these days as she seems riddled with arthritis, at least she’s very stiff and just hobbles along. As soon as I get up she follows me about whining until I open the door then she heads straight for the Land Rover rear door whereupon she puts her front paws on the rear crossmember until I open the door. Once the back door is open she skips straight into the rear loading area pawing at her cage to get in! Bonzo who stands on the driveway as far away as is possible, he wants to go walkies  

A spot of fencing

So, after our little jaunt I left Bonzo in the nice warm house and Molly in the cold Land rover, gathered some tools and headed over the hill on the Honda to finish bodging the boundary fence.

  

Leaving the quad running whilst I was so far from civilization cos I have a feeling the starter motor is about to fail and this model doesn’t have a pull cord I have this premonition of doom cos it’s a really common fault on Honda quads. The starter brushes wear out and the starter won’t work, which isn’t a problem if you have a pull start but the fuel injection models don’t have one It’s called progress says he who remembers when cars came with a hole in the front bumper for a starting handle Anyway the brushes are cheap enough and easily available and I usually have a set, unfortunately it’s also a problem on other quads too and I recently fitted my spares to the Yamaha. They were not actually identical but near enough to fit  

With the fence more or less sorted, I grabbed my tools and headed for the office.

 

Making a mental note to walk up to the top of the ‘Hill of The Hind’ one day to check out those rocks right at its summit. Not today though, I’d a tax return to do

The water mine

Before stepping into the house to do my paperwork I called in my Bunker to take off my wet clothes. The Bunker so named after it’s slit like window, is my Plant room on the back of the house which has now morphed into my drying room and distilled water factory.

  

With the thermal store, freezer inverters and a large battery bank in there and being well insulated I’ve turned it into a drying room by having a dehumidifier running in there pretty much the whole time. The water it extracts being in great demand for all my batteries because I use an awful lot of it, at least 25lts per month between myself and my mate, which equates to around £200PA on water Now some people will tell you it’s not suitable because it can pick up traces of aluminium from the dehumidifiers condenser or it’s not filtered or some such pish. Me I take the view that there’s unlikely to be much aluminium or dirt in it so I’m happy with that. Anyway since I reconfigured one of my wind turbines to charge the batteries in this shed and run the dehumidifier it’s always lovely and warm,

usually around 17 to 20 degrees, so it’s an ideal spot. Not only that but my ASHP that heats my thermal store is in there so that’s much more efficient when its intake is warm

Anyway, after slowly taking my waterproofs off, rearranging my washing and admiring the scent of freshly drying clothes for much longer than was necessary I reluctantly went indoors. Whereupon after having a coffee or two and a couple of fried eggs I started tidying my office in preparation for sitting down in front of the ‘puter to do my tax return. Several hours later I emerged triumphantly having got it submitted a week before the deadline

Port Arnish

After all the mental strain I set off with Bonzo to the shore to put away the Pioner for good. The forecast wasn’t looking like it was gonna be fit for towing pipes any time soon so I thought I’d better haul it right up and put a few more ropes on it.

     

Bonzo and I took the old shortcut from Arnish to Torran rather than the track. This leads through what is now a birch wood but at one time was a cultivated area with houses. Even in my time those trees in the third image were not there and the area was known as the Green. Now what’s not smothered by Bracken is covered with scrub birch The blue thing in the second image being a den Ross and his pals made some ten or twelve years ago.

 

Looks like Marmalade, Jiffy and Spotty have been here  

and there amongst all the birch, hazel and  rowan a lonely holly

It’s hard to believe that this was all green and a great spot for magic mushrooms in the summer

With the Pioneer hauled right up and tied down I took a moment or two to admire the stone work that turned this rocky shore into a little haven for small boat launching and the landing spot for bringing in seaborne supplies of old. For it was here that all supplies for North and South Arnish would be landed and carried to the various houses.

The shed itself being built into the surrounding rock.

 

As the tide was pretty low you can see how full use was made of the natural strata of the bedrock.

By the time we’d walked back the long way up the Torran Track to Arnish it was time to feed everyone once more, though I had to make do with last night’s warmed up curry.

Being a curry it always tastes better the day after and being suitably reinvigorated I did my Crofting Census form straight afterwards However I am most definitely not going to celebrate tonight. 

After only two large drams of Lakes Whisky makers special reserve No3 last night I felt like 5h1t this morning and I want to be ‘fresh as a daisy’ tomorrow to do my VAT return. After all as the dear departed Meat Loaf says

Two outta three aint bad.

Pigging the penstock

A quick look at yesterday’s forecast was telling me that it would be the last day for some considerable while for me to go and collect my pipe from the south end.

The 40m length of 90mm MDPE feed blower pipe that I’d salvaged last week, along with another 40m length I’d swapped with a friend was gonna save me lot of work joining smaller lengths together. Though Ross and I had already started doing this with the shorter sections we’d towed to the Schoolhouse previously. 80m with just one joint sounded much more appealing than making it up from many 5 or 6m lengths that we already had  

All I had to do was get it home, something I’ve done in the past by just dragging the stuff behind the Land Rover up the road! Sadly due to the pipes location this was out of the question, it would have to past too many parked cars and round a couple of tight bends. So it would have to go by sea and a brief respite in the frequent Atlantic blasts yesterday seemed like an opportunity not to be missed.

Though in truth it was probably just an excuse for me not to do may tax return So, after feeding the pigs and walking the dogs I went down to Port Arnish on the Honda with Bonzo.

 

 

With the Pioner in it’s winter berth and the tide not particularly high it was quite an effort but the boats unique plastic hull means it slides easily over rocks and pebbles into the sea.

The plastic hull may make this the ideal craft for bouncing along the shore but it’s not very dog friendly. The boats interior being just as hard and slippery for Bonzo’s feet and despite me taking off my coat so he could sit on that, by the time we got to Manish Island it was obvious that Bonzo was not a ‘sea dog’ so we returned to base and abandoned any thoughts of going 6 miles by boat

  

All I had to then was drag the Pioner back up the shore with the old winch installed by Calum Macleod https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Calum_MacLeod_(of_Raasay) many years ago.

Pipeline ‘pigging’

I may have been deterred by wee Bonzo from my boating plan but that didn’t mean I had to spend the rest of the day doing tax and VAT returns. Nosiree  I’m much more resourceful than that. After a ‘second breakfast’ I opted to ‘pig’ my penstock, or at least the easy one. This is the one next to the road with only 40m of head and 250m of pipe so it would give me some experience before attempting the much longer and higher ones.

   

First thing was to turn off the water supply by redirecting the inlet pipe and after cleaning out the header tank removing the filter to get ready for launching the ‘pig’. These specially made ‘pigs’ can be purchased from https://www.pipe-equipment.co.uk/product/foam-pigs/ where I bought mine from or http://pipelinepigging.co.uk/about.htm in West Kilbride.

 

Then down to the turbine house in the secret cove to turn off the pipe to let the tank fill again.

 

Then back up to the header tank to launch the pig. The foam pig is pushed into the pipe a foot or two with a piece of water pipe just to get it started. The pig has a none permeable membrane on the back end to help seal it. That done it was down to the turbine end to open the valve

  

Which at around 25mm is considerably smaller than the diameter of the foam pig

so when the water stopped I knew the pig had arrived

With the water flow stopped by the pig I returned to the header tank, stuffed another pig inside it, put the inlet pipe back on the tank and returned to the turbine house.

  

I got very wet indeed However the job was 100% successful and with darkness approaching I returned home to remove pig number 1 form the ball valve.

 

  

A much easier task than I was expecting

Pig number 1 was pretty much butchered but Pig number 2 will do another turn

Then it was time to fire up the generator and get it good and hot so I could drain the oil prior to servicing it, anything other than the tax return